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Briefly: Splice passes $2M

Carlos Santana is smooth and Kim Cattrall honoured in Liverpool.

Sarah Polley (NATHAN DENETTE / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Mon., July 12, 2010

• Earnings for sci-fi thriller Splice have passed the $2 million mark, making it the highest-grossing Canadian film of 2010, according to distributor E1. Shot in Toronto and Hamilton, it stars Sarah Polley and Adrien Brody as genetic scientists who use human DNA in a creature they create in the lab, leading to disastrous results.

• Canadian Kim Cattrall has swapped sleek Manhattan for grey Liverpool to accept an honorary fellowship from a university in her English home town. The Sex and the City star was named a fellow of Liverpool John Moores University in northwest England on Monday in recognition of her contribution to the arts. The 53-year-old actress was born in the English port city but was raised largely in Canada.

•Carlos Santana is smooth: The guitar god has gotten engaged after proposing onstage to his girlfriend, drummer Cindy Blackman. The proposal came during a tour stop Friday in Tinley Park, Ill., outside Chicago. He popped the question four songs into the concert after a Blackman drum solo.

She said yes, and they sealed it with a kiss, which was met with cheers from the crowd.

•Oprah Winfrey's quarter-century run on daytime TV may be accompanied by a TV film dramatizing her life.

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Veteran producer Larry A. Thompson said Monday the planned two- or four-hour Winfrey film will be based on Kitty Kelley's tell-all biography. Thompson says he has optioned it for six figures.

The TV project is expected to air in September 2011, which would coincide with the end of Winfrey's wildly successful weekday talk show.

An unknown will likely be cast to play Winfrey.

•Walter Hawkins, a Grammy Award-winning gospel singer, composer and pastor from Oakland, died Sunday. He was 61.

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